{"id":488640,"date":"2026-10-08T01:12:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488640\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T01:12:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:12:23","slug":"former-sf-da-employee-testifies-to-being-called-racial-slur-harassed-by-hr-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488640\/","title":{"rendered":"Former SF DA Employee Testifies to Being Called Racial Slur, Harassed by HR Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twanda Bailey\u2019s drawn-out legal battle against the district attorney finally went to trial on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

Oct 7, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 4:25 pm PT<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins speaks at a press conference outside the Warfield in San Francisco on Oct. 7, 2026. A former employee of the San Francisco District Attorney\u2019s Office testified Wednesday that after a co-worker called her the [N-word] in the office, the incident was never documented. Her case was thrown out in 2015 after an appeal from the city attorney\u2019s office, but a 2024 California Supreme Court ruling brought it back.
\n
\n\u00a0(Nina Glick\/KQED)<\/p>\n

A former employee of the San Francisco District Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a> testified Wednesday that after a co-worker called her the [N-word] in the office, the department\u2019s human resources manager didn\u2019t document the incident and instead routinely harassed the complainant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Twanda Bailey was the first witness in her lawsuit against the DA\u2019s office, where she worked for 14 years before quitting in late 2015. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Rebekah Evenson is presiding over the jury trial in a small San Francisco courtroom, after all San Francisco judges recused themselves.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Bailey was an exemplary lifelong public servant, receiving letters of recommendation for promotions and advancement in places like San Quentin State Prison and the San Francisco Unified School District.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By 2001, she was working in the DA\u2019s office, where she routinely received top marks on her evaluations, with ratings from her supervisors as \u201cexceeding expectations.\u201d She eventually began working as an investigative assistant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In January 2015, while under the leadership of George Gasc\u00f3n, the office had a mouse infestation, which Bailey had reported to human resources. On Jan. 22, Bailey\u2019s co-worker Saras Larkin \u2013 who had previously been her supervisor \u2013 pointed out that she saw a mouse run by Bailey\u2019s desk, which the plaintiff testified caused her to jump out of her chair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"San Francisco Police Department Chief Derrick Lew speaks at a press conference outside the Warfield in San Francisco on Oct. 7, 2026.\u00a0(Nina Glick\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Bailey testified that Larkin then said, \u201cYou [N-words] is so scary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said that she mumbled the phrase back to herself under her breath.<\/p>\n

Bailey said she told co-workers about the incident, but initially didn\u2019t report it to human resources because the office\u2019s HR director, Evette Taylor-Monachino, was good friends with Larkin. That, and two other Black women in the office, were either harassed or removed from the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was scared,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to get harassed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eventually, a supervisor overheard her discussing it at a holiday party and told Bailey that they would report it, she said. But three months later, when Bailey went to HR to get a copy of her report, Taylor-Monachino told her there was no report or formal complaint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bailey said Taylor-Monachino warned her that telling people in the office that Larkin called her a racial slur could create a \u201chostile work environment\u201d for her. Bailey testified that she left that meeting crying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that it was wrong that they didn\u2019t do an investigation,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cIt made me feel that I had to accept being called a scary [N-word].\u201d<\/p>\n

That summer, Bailey received numerous negative allegations against her in her performance evaluation, none of which she said were brought to her attention before being documented in her review. Bailey said she appealed that evaluation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In August 2015, Bailey filed a formal complaint against Taylor-Monachino, who was reassigned to different duties two months later, she said.<\/p>\n

Soon, Bailey said she was waiting for a parking spot when Taylor-Monachino pulled up to her car, rolled her window down slightly, and made a pointing gesture at Bailey, which she interpreted as \u201cyou\u2019re going to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bailey filed her lawsuit in December 2015, but the case was dismissed on appeal by the city attorney\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A section of the California seal hangs in San Francisco on the front of the State of California Earl Warren building on Jan. 22, 2007.\u00a0(Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But the California Supreme Court overturned that ruling in 2024<\/a>, saying a single instance of being called that slur by a co-worker with no oversight of an employee was enough to proceed, as that particular racial epithet carries \u201cthe stinging barbs of history, which catch and tear the psyche the way thorns tear at skin.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Bailey testified, her attorney, Daniel Bacon, attempted to admit a trove of documents as evidence, including Bailey\u2019s performance reviews from the DA\u2019s office, her handwritten notes documenting months of alleged harassment, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Judge Evenson repeatedly warned Bacon not to read from documents or refer to documents not yet admitted into evidence, as Deputy City Attorney Matthew Yan objected to many of those documents being admitted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bailey testified that she worked for the San Francisco Department of Public Health in 2018, but only lasted one week at that job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t the same. I had trouble concentrating,\u201d she said. \u201cI was frightened of supervisors. I didn\u2019t know what would happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Judge Evenson has limited the jury trial to 30 hours for each side, with the trial expected to conclude in less than two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twanda Bailey\u2019s drawn-out legal battle against the district attorney finally went to trial on Wednesday. Oct 7, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-488640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}